A useful Sage Intacct month-end close checklist tells your team what to finish, who owns it, and what evidence to retain. It covers the work from source processing and account reconciliations through financial statement review and closing the period in Intacct.
Use the checklist below as your monthly working plan. Assign a named preparer and reviewer to each applicable task, add your own deadlines, and mark unused modules as not applicable. Adjust the timing to your team's workload and task dependencies.
1. Set up your Sage Intacct month-end close checklist
Owner: Accounting manager.
Timing: Before period end.
- Confirm the entities, reporting currency, accounting period, and reporting package in scope.
- Set deadlines for vendor bills, employee expenses, customer billing, payroll changes, and information from other departments. Tell those departments when accounting needs their support.
- Assign each task a preparer, reviewer, deadline, and evidence location. Give unresolved items an owner and an escalation date.
- Confirm which conditional tasks below apply, including inventory, revenue schedules, foreign currency, and consolidation.
As an illustrative starting point, send support requests three business days before month-end, target source processing by business day 2, and schedule entity review for day 4. Adjust those dates to your volume and dependencies. Cash and schedule preparation can run in parallel.
Build dates around your actual fiscal calendar and holidays. Our free month-end close calendar generator gives you an Excel workbook with labeled business days and a template for recurring tasks.
Done when: The team has one agreed checklist and cutoff schedule. The team has a defined process for reviewing late information and recording expenses in the appropriate month.
2. Complete AP and AR processing
Owners: AP and AR leads.
Timing: First close phase.
- Enter and approve bills, credit notes, customer invoices, receipts, and employee expenses for the period. Review drafts and rejected items.
- Confirm that data from payroll, billing, purchasing, expense, and other systems imported successfully. Fix failed or duplicate imports, and compare transaction counts or totals with the original records.
- Check for revenue earned but not yet billed, goods or services received without a vendor bill, and vendor bills received after period-end. Record accruals where needed.
- Check that transactions use the correct posting date, entity, account, department, and other dimensions.
Done when: Expected source activity is accounted for, pending items have a documented disposition, and material cutoff exceptions are resolved or approved under your close policy.
3. Reconcile cash and credit cards
Owner: Cash accountant or treasury, with a reviewer.
Timing: Start as statements arrive, alongside source processing.
Reconcile every active bank and credit card account through period end.
Investigate unmatched activity, record missing fees or interest, and review outstanding checks, deposits in transit, and old reconciling items. Document each timing difference and assign a follow-up date.
In Intacct, use Cash Management > All > Reconciliation > Bank or Credit card. Confirm the account, statement ending date, and ending balance before proceeding. Read Sage's bank and credit card reconciliation guidance.
Bank reconciliation in Sage Intacct. Start with the statement's account, date, and balance. Available menus depend on your configuration and permissions.
Done when: The statement and book balances reconcile through supported reconciling items, corrections are posted, and the reviewer has approved the reconciliation.
4. Post payroll, accruals, and recurring journal entries
Owners: Assigned account preparers.
Timing: In parallel with cash, after supporting information is available.
- Compare unpaid wages, bonuses, benefits, and payroll taxes with payroll records. Record or adjust accruals so the books reflect what was owed at period-end.
- Update prepaid and fixed-asset schedules. Record applicable amortization, additions, disposals, and depreciation.
- Record expenses incurred but not yet billed. Check your AP system for bills not yet posted to Sage Intacct, and check for bills already entered to avoid accruing for an expense already recorded.
- Update debt, interest, lease, and tax schedules. Document estimates and assumptions that need review.
For each journal, retain the calculation, supporting document, approval, and posted entry reference. Specify any reversal or subsequent clearing action.
Done when: Approved entries are posted to the correct period and entity, and the related schedules reflect those entries.
5. Record inventory, revenue and project activity
Owners: Relevant module owners and accounting reviewers.
Timing: Alongside steps 2–4.
Add tasks for the modules your business uses:
- Inventory: Reconcile inventory records to the GL, investigate negative balances, and review count adjustments, goods in transit, and reserves.
- Revenue and contracts: Verify billing and revenue schedules, record required revenue entries, and reconcile deferred revenue and contract balances. Record revenue earned during the period, and verify balances for customer prepayments and revenue earned but not yet billed.
- Projects or time-based billing: Confirm approved time and costs are complete. Review unbilled work and project-related revenue or expense estimates.
Done when: Applicable modules are complete for the period, their accounting entries are posted, and exceptions have been reviewed.
6. Reconcile subledgers and the balance sheet
Owners: Senior accountants.
Timing: After relevant transactions and entries are posted.
Compare AP and AR detail with their GL control accounts using consistent period-end dates, entities, books, and currency settings. Reconcile other subledgers you use. Then reconcile each balance-sheet account to appropriate external support or a rollforward, including cash, accruals, prepaids, fixed assets, debt, taxes, and equity.
Suppose the AP aging totals $1,482,300, while the GL shows $1,489,050. Investigate the $6,750 difference. First check report parameters and source detail, then investigate missing postings, timing, or entries affecting the control account. Support any correcting journal with the identified cause and rerun both reports.
Done when: Every account in scope has support, a current GL balance, explained reconciling items, and reviewer approval. Assign dated follow-up to outstanding items.
7. Complete foreign-currency and intercompany work if applicable
Owners: Senior accountants and the group accounting manager.
Timing: Before reconciliation review.
For foreign-currency balances, verify exchange rates and complete revaluation work for open bills and invoices. Review and post the resulting entries at the entity level.
For multiple entities, compare intercompany receivables, payables, charges, and settlements between entities. Resolve mismatches in amounts, period, currency, or coding before final consolidation.
These entries can change balances already reconciled in step 6. Ensure that affected workpapers are updated.
Done when: Required currency entries are reviewed, intercompany differences are resolved, and affected reconciliations tie to the updated GL.
8. Review results and approve the entity close
Owner: Controller or accounting manager.
Timing: After material entries and reconciliations are complete.
Review the trial balance and draft financial statements. Compare results with the prior period and budget. Investigate unexpected margin movements, unusual account balances, missing activity, and material changes by department or other dimensions.
Require explanations to be supported by transactions or schedules. If a difference is due to timing, specify the expected resolution date.
Review journal entries awaiting approval, reconciliation exceptions, and late information. If a correction posts, rerun affected reports, reconciliations, and variance review before approving the results.
Done when: The controller has approved the entity's results and any remaining exceptions, with their financial impact and disposition documented. Retain the review record with the work using close task sign-offs and attached workpapers.
9. Close the books in Sage Intacct
Owner: Controller.
Timing: After entity close approval.
Coordinate any separate subledger close tasks so nobody is still entering approved activity. Intacct's GL close also closes open transaction summaries and the Cash Management period. See Sage's open and close process overview.
Open General Ledger > All > Books > Close. Check To the end of period and the actual closing date. At a shared-company top level, confirm Entity or entity group: leaving it blank closes all entities. Closing a later period also closes earlier open periods. Sage's Close books instructions explains this process in more detail.
Close books screen in Sage Intacct.
Done when: Entities and period are closed and completion is recorded. Route subsequent corrections through an authorized process, including refreshed reporting and review.
10. Consolidate if your reporting requires it
Owner: Group accountant, with controller review.
Timing: After entity readiness for the final consolidation.
You can prepare interim consolidations earlier for preliminary results. For the final run, Sage recommends completing entity-level entries, updating revaluations, reconciling accounts and closing the first. Intacct's pre-consolidation checklist describes these prerequisites.
Run the final consolidation. Review currency translation and eliminations, reconcile totals to entity balances, and investigate remaining intercompany differences.
Done when: The group reviewer has approved the final consolidated results. A single-entity team without consolidation requirements can mark this step not applicable.
11. Issue reports and retain the close evidence
Owner: Controller, supported by accounting and FP&A.
Timing: After final approval.
Issue the reporting package, including the balance sheet, income statement, cash-flow reporting and management commentary.
Retain the final trial balance, relevant GL detail, reconciliations, journal support, approvals, variance explanations, and reporting package in a folder for the period.
Done when: Stakeholders have the approved reporting package.
Before rolling forward, assign corrective actions for this month's delays and recurring reconciling items. Update owners, recurring entries, and deadlines in next month's checklist.
How CloseCore helps organize and automate the month-end close process
CloseCore connects to Sage Intacct and your existing file storage so your team can manage the close in one place. Track sign-offs alongside the supporting workpapers, set up recurring tasks once and have them roll forward automatically, and ensure reconciliations remain tied out.
Once you have a well-defined and repeatable process, use AI to automate the most manual and error-prone work. Create AI agents to perform reconciliations and transaction matching, prepare accruals against invoice records, and draft variance explanations.